Dorothy Eden Read Online Free PDF

absurd that a woman should bear a child in the greatest agony and then live to be unsure of his identity.
    But if this was not Blane, who was it? And what did he want?
    A shiver of fear went over her. She saw a ruthlessness she hadn’t previously noticed in his mouth, a moodiness in his eyes. She spoke sharply to cover her sudden foolish nervousness.
    ‘Order the champagne. We need it. We need gaiety, a celebration. Fetch Amalie and Titus. Titus must come, even if he’s been put to bed. His grandmother needs him.’
    The man straightened himself slowly. He stooped to print a kiss on Lady Malvina’s hot and fretted brow.
    ‘Thank you, Mamma,’ he said gently, and left the room.

4
    S ARAH DRESSED WITH THE greatest care. She had to look like a gentlewoman, though an impoverished one. There was not too much difficulty about that, for none of her clothes was new. Indeed, she had not had a new gown for two years, just before Papa had died. Then he had come back from St Tropez in fine fettle, an infallible sign that he had been lucky at the tables. All the girls had been permitted to get new gowns, and Mamma had had the drawing-room done out in one of the modern wallpapers, a deep-maroon colour with a rich gilt design. It was a little like one the Queen had chosen for her new country house at Balmoral. One of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, who was a cousin of Mamma’s, had told them so.
    But within a month of that apparent beginning of better times Papa was dead of a chill, and they were all in mourning. And there was almost no money.
    From that time, the two eldest, Amelia and Charlotte, had positions as companions to rich elderly ladies, and Sarah had been taken under Aunt Adelaide’s wing. Aunt Adelaide had thought to find her a husband, but Sarah, after being annoyingly pernickety about several suitable young men, had chosen to fall in love with Ambrose Mallow who was now as impecunious as herself.
    It wasn’t fair! Sarah told herself. She had scarcely slept for sorrow and indignation, and now the very thought of this turn of luck that had snatched hers and Ambrose’s happy future from them made the colour deepen indignantly in her cheeks.
    She must remain calm. She could not present herself to the new Lady Mallow looking flushed and irresponsible. She must remember to keep her eyes lowered, and not to answer her ladyship as if she were an equal. Not only an equal, she thought indignantly, but a superior. For who was this woman, straight from the West Indies, as anonymous as someone picked at random from the streets. That was where she would go back, Sarah told herself vigorously. In a very short time it would be herself interviewing applicants for positions at Mallow Hall. And the first person to be dismissed would be that sly villain Soames, the head groom, who in court had put words into the impostor’s mouth.
    The impostor—but in the meantime she would have to learn to call him Lord Mallow. She would keep her eyes downcast and murmur meekly, ‘Yes, my lord. No, my lord.’ Ambrose confidently expected her to act the part, and she would show him she could.
    Excitement made her impatient to hurry with her dressing and set out on the way. To make her unbidden visit even more plausible she had the newspaper which had reported the result of the trial very fully, and a gossip columnist had interviewed Lord Mallow himself.
    ‘Lord Mallow,’ the infuriating chit-chat informed her, ‘intends to travel to Mallow Hall on the Kentish coast early in the week. He is looking forward with the greatest pleasure to displaying his childhood home to his wife, and, of course, to its heir Titus, named after the fourth baron. Lord Mallow has not yet made any plans for his son’s education. He is too young, as yet, for Lord Mallow’s old preparatory school, and it seems likely a governess will be employed.’
    The fact that the columnist was playing into her hands failed to console Sarah for this smug and triumphant statement.